## The company Ooak Data turns company data into training data for AI agents. Frontier labs can train models to reason. They cannot train them to work: navigating a real company's Slack threads, half-finished Notion docs, contradictory Jira tickets, and permission boundaries. That requires real enterprise data, and you cannot synthesize it.
You have
- to source it.
- We plug into enterprise tools, anonymize everything into a structurally identical digital twin, and generate reinforcement-learning environments with expert-level tasks calibrated against frontier models.
- Three weeks from raw company data to an RL-ready environment, three times faster than at launch.
- We are a Y Combinator company with signed contracts with three frontier AI labs, and we are scaling delivery aggressively over the next twelve months.
- Three founders, full-time since December 2025: Pierre-Louis (CEO, ex-COO in edtech, sold data to frontier labs), Grégoire (CPO, first PM at Epsor through Series B), Thomas (CTO, ex-Head of Data at PayLead, ex-Samsung AI lab). ## Why this role exists We were 4 in June.
- We are 16 today, and we should be around 25 by Christmas.
- So far every hire has been screened, often sourced, and always closed by one of the three of us.
- We loved doing it.
- But at this pace it pulls us away from product, engineering and customers, and it makes us slower to answer people than we want to be.
- Speed matters.
- What matters more is who we become.
- The team we build over the next twelve months is the company.
- Every hire either strengthens what we stand for, trust, ambition, collective, kindness, or quietly waters it down.
- Someone has to hold that line with us: in who we go after, in the hard calls, in how people are welcomed, how they grow, and why they stay.
- We are looking for a Head of People to build that team with us.
- The one people will want to join, and grow in. ## What you will own **Hiring, end to end** * 10+ hires in your first six months across tech, ops and GTM, found and closed in-house: ML engineers, data engineers, a product manager, sales, ops. * You hunt.
- Cold outreach, referrals, communities, whatever finds the right person.
- Agencies when it helps, never as a crutch. * You close, against counter-offers, big-tech comp and plain inertia.
- And you co-own the bar with us: who we hire, who we don't, and why. * You keep it fast and humane.
- Board clean, interviewers prepped, every candidate answered within 48 hours.
- People should enjoy the process even when the answer is no. **Employer brand** * Careers page, YC Work at a Startup, content, events.
- Make Ooak the place AI-curious people want to work. **The team we become** * Turn our values into how we actually work: how we give feedback, how we decide, how we welcome someone on day one, how we say goodbye when we have to. * Help us make the hard people calls, and make sure they are made with care. **The people foundation** * The BSPCE plan and the salary grid, and their yearly refresh. * Payroll coordination with our accountant, France and US, employees and freelancers. * Onboarding, feedback cadence, reviews, and the rituals that keep 25 people feeling like one team. ## Who you are You have done this before.
You have
- run People in a startup or scale-up that grew fast while you were there, and you know what crossing 50 people does to a company.
- Maybe you built the function from a blank page, maybe you scaled one.
- What matters to us:
you have
closed hard profiles yourself, and you have stayed close to a team through the good weeks and the hard conversations. * **You see People as a lever for the business**, not a support function. You know what a decision really costs before you advise against it, and you can tell real risk from theoretical risk. * **You have worked directly with founders**, and you tell them what they don't want to hear, kindly and with reasons.
You are right often enough that we listen. * **You have built a culture.** Somewhere there is a company where the values showed up in everyday decisions because of you. * **You listen.** Friction, unspoken needs, the mood of the place: you pick it up before it becomes a problem. * **You give trust first**, and you are demanding on what follows: deadlines, contracts, process. * **Kind, not soft.** Honest feedback, hard conversations, and warmth in how you deliver both. * **You can build and run a team**, in-house and with the right partners. * **Curious about AI.** You use it every day, and you actually want to understand what we build. * **8+ years in People or Talent.** Fluent French and English, ideally with a multi-country story behind you.
Based in Paris. And you want to give a lot to build an ambitious, fast-growing company where people are glad to come in on a Monday. **Bonus points** if you have hired for an AI or data company and know what a good ML engineer looks like on paper and in a call. ## Terms * **Compensation:** €70-90k + bonus, and 0.2% to 0.5% BSPCE depending on profile. * **Location:** Paris, on-site with 1 to 2 days WFH. * **Start date:** as soon as you can. * **Perks:** Alan health insurance, 50% Navigo.
